MA and Credulity

There is a certain tacit agreement in the unwritten laws of the world's slingers of hokum: Don't blow the game.

Essentially, within the new age/spiritual community, the fringe martial arts movement, the cryptoscience and mediumship circles, etc, there is a sort of culture dictating "honor thy neighbor's bullshit."

I'm going to post an example from AK's message boards. I don't do this so you can storm them - I do it because I happened across a perfect example of a groupthink thought-pattern I think all skeptics need to be able to spot.

Observe: The primary claim of the thread - the concepts the OP puts forth - are manifestly untrue. I'll say the probability this person does not actually go through a wolf-like transformation approaches 100% asymptotically, if not directly.

At any rate, note what follows: Even though they do not outwardly confirm his ideas, each following poster, rather then display a normal human reaction, (ie, "You turn into a wolf? Your eyes change color? There's this guy Randi, would you like to win a million dollars...you can pick up another mil by winning the Nobel...") instead briefly validates the OP and then goes on to "spin" the concept of his post into an expansion of their own personal crank theory. Then the following poster does the same. If you think about it, anyone who believed this OP would be eager to learn the technique or exploit/study such a person in some way. At the very least, they'd be filled with honest curiosity to experience, first hand, something unknown to the physical world.

Instead, they acknowledge, discard, and attempt to trump the proceeding tale. It's a pattern you seen in all sorts of cultures - but usually in the context of contests of boasts, riddles, tall-tales, or freestyle rap. Call it Baron Munchausen by Web Proxy Syndrome. . . .or hell, call it something shorter.

Learn this pattern. Watch for it. When it manifests, it's ALWAYS something done in a room of wankers, by one wanker looking to wrest the invisible talking stick for himself and become the Alpha Wanker in the Wankpack. If you learn to spot and avoid this pattern, you'll avoid a gross amount of bullshit in all facets of your life.

(I meant to start this in "bullshido" but maybe it belongs here anyway)